God Laughs – At Balaam
God Laughs – At Balaam.
“The One who sits enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them… The wicked plot against the righteous; they snarl at them in defiance. But the Lord laughs, for He sees their day of judgment coming… They come out at night, snarling like vicious dogs as they prowl the streets. Listen to the filth that comes from their mouths, their words cut like swords. ‘After all, who can hear us?’ they sneer. For your part, Lord, you laugh at them.” (Psalm 2:4; Psalm 37:13; Psalm 59:6-8).
It seems to me that our Lord God has an ironic sense of humor. He is reported to have deep belly laughs when He looks at mankind and sees how ridiculous we can be. He seems to laugh whenever we humans do things that are laughably absurd. God sees irony everywhere, He observes behavior that is unexpectedly foolish in light of His greatness. God seems amused when He sees the opposite of what one should expect in a God-filled universe. He chuckles at attitudes that defy logic from His perspective. On the one hand, God isn’t surprised by anything. On the other hand, He seems to be pleasantly scornful at what we humans can do.
People build an immense building and think it will reach God and enable access to Him, and God finds it ridiculous. He sees nations without a conscience conspire against God to cut Him out of their laws and society, and God can only say, ‘Are you serious?’ He sees a man who thinks he can become equal to Him in every respect, a god-player, and God can only shake His head. God observes someone who thinks He is able to flee His presence and live as if He doesn’t exist, and God can only look at him with righteous scorn. He hears many of us utter obscene and hurtful language thinking that no one is within earshot, and God can only say, ‘You’re just kidding me, right?’ He sees so many who think they can do evil and live without restraint, and God can only sigh in sad amusement, knowing there will be a true come-to-Jesus moment waiting in the future. God knows that there will be a Judgment Day coming, and He takes joy in the reality of a moral universe that He created. He knows that all who have rejected Him will someday reap what they sown if they have rejected His grace in life. All this foolishness, all this thoughtlessness… Is it that we don’t have a high enough view of God? Is it that we have too high a view of ourselves? Both? Perhaps what makes God laugh loudest is our futile hubris, our unrighteous chutzpah.
Our downfall is probably attributed to our hubris, which can be defined this way:
HUBRIS: a Greek word that means excessive pride; exaggerated self-conceit; overwhelming self-confidence; sheer arrogance; in ancient Greece, hubris was a character flaw reflecting a defiance of the gods, when someone would foolishly or maliciously act against the divine order; someone with hubris always has a lack of self-awareness and won’t stop to examine his behavior or consider other actions; people with hubris are generally too full of themselves to question their motives or actions; people who are overcome with hubris eventually bring about their own downfall. As Rabbi Jonathon Sacks once wrote, “If Scripture is our guide, what makes God laugh is a person’s delusion of grandeur.”
“So Moab the prince of Midian sent messengers to Balaam, saying to Balaam, ‘Please come and curse these Israelites. They are too mighty for me. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” (Numbers 22:5-6).
Balaam was a religious puzzle. He was one of the most perplexing, unpredictable, and in the end, corrupt characters in the Hebrew Bible. He lived and operated in Mesopotamia, and was famous in that whole region for being a prophet for hire. He was an ancient version of a celebrity prophet. If you wanted someone to be cursed, Balaam was your man, for a price. He would even offer a blessing if the money was right. He was more a sorcerer than a prophet, strictly speaking. In Biblical history, he was infamous for being a prophet always angling for a profit. He seemed to know the right words to say in very religious speech, but these words were not coming from his greedy little heart. Eugene Peterson called Balaam “a hollow man with no substance.” Peterson went on to say that Balaam “said all the right things, but he did all the wrong things.” On the surface, Balaam feared Yahweh, and even spoke in His name occasionally. But he counted Yahweh as only one of many other gods to consider in his trade. There is no doubt that Balaam thought of himself as a celebrity prophet as well.
In Numbers 22, as the Israelites marched toward the Promised Land, they decided to camp out in the neighboring country of Moab. Balak, the king of Moab, was terrified of the Israelites. So he wanted a spiritual edge over them to avoid defeat at their hands. Balak reached out to the most famous seer he could think of, Balaam. Balak wanted to hire Balaam to come down to Moab, from 400 miles away, to curse the Israelites. Balaam was resistant to the idea at first, but after Balak started offering a big pay day, the temptation was too great. Balaam’s mixed heart was in full force. On the one hand he saw the wisdom of only saying what God wanted him to say. On the other hand, a simple little curse could increase his wealth tenfold.
So Balaam started his journey to Moab, increasingly convinced that maybe God wouldn’t mind if he laid a curse on the Israelites. In deciding to come to Moab, Balaam even delayed his answer to Balak, approaching Yahweh to see if he could talk Him into Balak’s plan. Balaam apparently knew just enough about Yahweh to make him dangerous. While on his journey to Moab, riding on his faithful donkey, there suddenly was something blocking the way. “God was very angry when Balaam went, and the Angel of the Lord stood in the road to oppose him. When the donkey saw the Angel of Yahweh standing in the road with a drawn sword in His hand, she turned off the road into a field.” (22:22). After continued thwarted attempts to travel down the road, Balaam, who was blind to this divine Messenger, started beating his poor donkey. It turns out that an ignorant creature like a donkey could see an angel, and the so-called mighty prophet could not.
Humorously, the Lord gave the donkey the ability to speak to Balaam, and she complained to Balaam about the beatings. She stated her history of being faithful to Balaam, so there must be a good reason for her resistance. Finally Balaam got it, his eyes were opened to see the Angel. Balaam offered an insincere apology and went on his way, unaware that a donkey had made a fool of him, the superstar prophet. This was all laughable to God, of course. As Rabbi Sacks once said, it’s as if the Lord showed Balaam that if He wanted to, He could turn a donkey into a prophet and a prophet into a donkey. Perhaps, as God chuckled, He thought it was time to cool down the hubris of this prophet just a bit.
For some reason, Balaam wasn’t the least surprised that he had engaged in a conversation with his donkey. The donkey saved Balaam’s life from the sword, but Balaam continued seeing dollar signs in his eyes so he was evidently ignorant of who his savior was. Despite his greedy intentions, God forced Balaam to speak a blessing over the Israelites instead of the intended curse. After repeated attempts, each time it was clear that God would turn his curses into blessings through Balaam’s lips. Finally Balak fired Balaam and sent him sway. Before long, though, Balaam found the time to curse some of Israel’s enemies. Surprisingly, despite Balaam’s intentions, he spoke the word of the Lord over the Israelites and their enemies. He even had a vision of the Messiah that has stood the test of time… “A star rises out of Jacob, a scepter from Israel.” (24:17).
Balaam’s inner corruption came to the surface, though, when he later encouraged the Israelites to disobey God by engaging in the sexual worship of Baal. He cheered them on as the Israelites continued to have sexual relations with the pagan Moabite women. So apart from being greedy for gain, he taught others how to sin through sex and idolatry. Balaam went down in history as a sinner of monstrous proportions, and was even mentioned negatively in a number of New Testament sources (2 Peter 2:15-16; Jude 1:11; Revelation 2:14). Maybe Peter said it best when he remarked that Balaam “loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet Balaam.”
Balaam seems to be a prime example of what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:21-23… “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven… Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, I never knew you!”